medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Well, actually, it is, in the sense that 'impact factors' that measure the
number of citations and other such quantitative data points are skewed by
the upsurge in electronically available journals. In turn, the availability
of those journals is in turn impacted by their appearance in aggregated
databases, which are in turn subject to market forces and, as in the recent
decision of Science to pull out of JSTOR, are therefore limited by an
institution's financial resources.
I don't know if this database dynamic has been studied, but it seems to me
that those who publish in more readily available journals that are
accessible from multiple online databases have an immediate edge over those
journals that are not as readily and widely (electronically) available. This
is especially a factor for institutions whose library budgets force
difficult choices for journal and database access.
In my own areas of interest and expertise (and my own research here is
anecdotal), those who publish in journals available through the most popular
and widely subscribed databases are cited much more often than those whose
work appears in equally 'important' though less widely (electronically)
available databases.
In other words, I think we have to be careful of lending too much credence
to so-called objective measures of scholarly output.
Best from Anchorage,
Dan
_____________________________________
Daniel T. Kline, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
3211 Providence Drive, PSB-212C
U of Alaska Anchorage
Anchorage, Alaska 99508
907.786.4364 | [log in to unmask]
The Electronic Canterbury Tales:
http://www.kankedort.net
"Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered
for just such an emergency."
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Briggs
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 8:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] Another publishing comment
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
V. Kerry Inman wrote:
>
> The question is how much publishing does your institution expect for
> tenure? I know that this is not a solid rule anywhere, but Dean's
> have said things like, 12 articles in 'top' peer reviewed journals
> (University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education). 'Top' is
> in "inverted commas" because it is vague and indefinable.
Actually, it isn't. They use things like Impact Factors from Journal
Citation Reports.
John Briggs
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